Celebrating Autism Mischief

Those of you who know our story understand our major struggles when our son was ages 3 – 5 and having potty issues. Needless to say it was not fun, pretty or anything that I would ever wish upon any parent.

Thankfully in the past year and-a-half, our son has made tremendous strides when it comes to using the potty, staying dry during the night and all that fun stuff. Talk about a MAJOR sigh of relief. I think we probably set a world record for washing sheets, cleaning poop off the walls and carpet.

HOWEVER…last week our, now almost 7-year-old son, wet the bed. We certainly weren’t thrilled about this and he knows there are consequences to his behaviors when he understands what he’s doing (and believe me, he understood what he was doing), but this time it actually gave us hope and made us smile.

Typically our children will wake up between 6 – 6:30 AM and will come down and get in bed with me and my wife. We will lay there for 10-15 minutes and talk, tell stories and get ready for the day to begin…it’s a lot of fun.

On this particular day I noticed that my son’s shirt was on backwards. Hmmmmm…I didn’t remember putting it on backwards but I didn’t think too much of it. Until I went upstairs and noticed that he had wet the bed.

When my wife asked him if he had wet the bed, he told us, “NO!”

“William…did you wet the bed?”

“NO”

“William did you wet the bed?”

“NO”

“William did you wet the bed?”

“Yes”

What was so great was that he knew he wet the bed, but when he woke up with a wet bed, instead of running down and getting in bed with us with soaking clothes…he first took off his wet clothes…STUFFED THEM IN A DRAWER…and proceeded to put on dry clothes–thinking we wouldn’t notice.

What are we celebrating here? What’s the point of this blog?

WILLIAM WAS DOING AGE-APPROPRIATE ACTIVITIES.

He knew he did something he wasn’t supposed to and, just like any “typical” 7-year-old, he tried to be sneaky and cover it up. He specifically put on dry clothes and hid the wet ones because he thought we wouldn’t find out.

I wasn’t happy about a wet bed…but that he was doing age appropriate activities…and that is a HUGE step for him!

We’ve noticed that he has been more sneaky in recent months as well. He will think we are not looking and will try to climb a fence…and he’ll look back and keep making sure we’re not looking…then when he sees that we ARE looking, he’ll smile and pretend that he’s not doing any mischief.

He has started to tease us or his sister–not in a mean way but a playful way.

Those are major steps–he is learning social skills and playful ways of being a 7-year-old.

Of course we don’t want him to lie, cheat, steal or do anything harmful to himself or others…but being mischievous is part of being a kid.

We rejoice in those brief moments of “typical-ness” and yearn for more…maybe not more wet sheets, but we’ll take whatever we can get!